Artificial Intelligence and Digital Curation – Opportunities and Risks for Libraries
Clemens Neudecker, project manager Berlin State Library – Prussian Cultural Heritage
Artificial intelligence and machine learning are among the most important technological trends of the past years. Their development opens up new opportunities for libraries, too, such as the automated indexing and curation of digitised documents through optical character recognition systems, image classification and semantic enrichment. The historical nature of most holdings also poses new challenges, however. AI technologies that are widespread in research and industry contexts often need to be adapted or even improved before they can be used in the library domain.
This lecture outlines the opportunities inherent to current AI processes in consideration of experiences and applications at the Berlin State Library. It takes ethical, legal and social aspects of artificial intelligence into consideration and discusses digital curation technologies in the field of cultural heritage.
Clemens Neudecker has studied philosophy, computer science and politics at LMU Munich. He currently works as a research administrator in the general directorate at the Berlin State Library – Prussian Cultural Heritage. For nearly 20 years, he has carried out research into computer vision and natural language processing and their application in the context of digitisation and digital humanities.